This year was a “wonderful” one thanks to Coronavirus (killing tens of thousands of people) and its side effects (lockdown, economy tumbling down, crops not being harvested in time, prices going up for some essentials, people loosing jobs, etc) the preper in me wanted to make sure we get through this winter as healthy as we can by making sure we have access to fruit and veg in various formats (frozen, cooked and stored in jars and pickled).
This year’s vegetable “harvest” (you might remember project grow your own veg) was better than last year’s (because … well … we planted more 🙂 ) and after enjoying ripe tomatoes we decided to pickle whatever was left on the vines (the green ones that might have needed a few more weeks to ripen).
We decided to start “small” and bought 3 x 20L plastic jars for fermentation (about 18 – 20£ each on amazon) and started filling them up with whatever we had in the house at that time.
Two of them are a mix of green tomatoes, carrots, cabbage, peppers, cucumbers + various spices and herbs added to them such as: mustard seeds, dill, salt, a bit of sugar, horseradish, celeriac, pepper seeds – this recipe we usually serve as a pickle salad with stews – and the last one we kept exclusively for cabbage (of course we added some spices to it like dill, cumin, salt) – which has a specific purpose for us: to be used later on to make “sarmale” (think minced meat rolled in pickled cabbage leafs cooked for a number of hours – amazing! – we usually cook these on special occasions like Christmas, Easter, big events like weddings, etc) and whatever is not used for that purpose will be used in soups and stews to give them a special home made taste.
The first two are already good for serving (not to mention we started serving them already and had to add more veg otherwise we risked not enjoying them during winter 🙂 ), the one for cabbage will take about 1.5 – 2 months before being ready – which means they’ll be ready just in time for the winter holidays.
cabbage for “sarmale” 
pickle salad – type 1 
pickle salad – type 2 
the picke stash
I realize that most of you might not be familiar with these particular recipes (since they are a family special usually, not to mention a Balkans thing) but if you find yourself in a restaurant that serves them do give them a try (those of you that personally know me rest assured, I’ll save some for you to try with one of our family’s famous stews )
Was about to write “Enjoy!” but not sure you will … more likely … I’ll enjoy these 🙂